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What Disney Needs To Do To Make The Next 'Star Wars' Trilogy Awesome

Disney’s acquisition of LucasFilm could actually be very good for Star Wars. Here’s some advice on how to stay true to the franchise.

With the recent acquisition of LucasFilm by Disney, a whole new Star Wars trilogy is on the way, with Episode VII in the works for 2015.

This is terrific news for many reasons, not the least of which is more Star Wars films for fans. Of course, when George Lucas announced the prequel trilogy, we were all pretty excited as well, and look how that turned out.

Lucas took tight control of Episodes 1-3, and what we ended up getting were a bunch of special effects, Jar Jar Binks, and a story devoid of characters we actually cared about.

Before this acquisition took place, I was considering writing a piece about how Lucas needed to hand over the reins to somebody else in order to make any new movies great, but now that we’ve learned Lucas will only play an advising role on the upcoming films, we can file that suggestion as an unwritten success.

Here are a few more suggestions that Disney never asked for but that I’m giving to them free of charge nonetheless.

Get Joss Whedon To Write and Direct

Image via: http://pop-break.com/2011/02/23/past-future-firefly/

The prequel films leading up to this year’s terrific Avengers had me worried. Outside of Iron Man, the films were okay at best. An ensemble, I worried, would simply compound all the flaws of the prequels into a big, busy mess.

I shouldn’t have worried. With Joss Whedon at the helm, the film turned out to be one of the best super hero movies to hit theaters in years.

Marvel Studios, Paramount, and Disney struck one out of the park, largely thanks to the fantastic writing and direction in the film.

Hopefully Disney looks at the success of The Avengers and gets Whedon onboard for the upcoming Star Wars trilogy. Whedon has a real talent for making us care about the characters in his films and television, and he does a remarkably good job at weaving together action, humor, and more serious moments – all things Star Wars needs to succeed.

Besides, Whedon has experience with this sort of thing. Even if Firefly was cancelled after just one season, it’s still a great show with great characters, and the follow-up film Serenity was just as good.

Pixar Needs to be Involved

Like Whedon, the people over at Pixar have a knack for storytelling and bringing characters on the screen to life. John Carter may have been a big flop at the box office, and it certainly wasn’t without its flaws, but it also proved that a big budget, ambitious science-fiction project is something that Disney can and should pursue.

Pixar’s Andrew Stanton was an able director, and he and others from Pixar would be great additions to any Star Wars project. Plus, putting the Pixar talent together with Whedon could result in something truly amazing.

Don’t Forget the Muppets

I understand that CGI is the way of the future. Well, the way of the present and the future if we’re being honest.

But there’s simply no way that the new CGI Yoda is as good as the old Jim Henson version. If Disney wants to be truly bold, they’d mix their CGI efforts with some good old fashioned Muppets.

They wouldn’t have to do a lot of this to make it awesome, either. Most of the animation, aliens, and alien worlds could still be achieved through computer animation (another realm where Pixar could come in handy) but a few key characters using that old Henson magic would be extremely cool.

Build the Films Around Characters, Not Events

The biggest problem with the prequel trilogy was the lack of characters we could actually relate to or care about. Contrast that with the swashbuckling adventures of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. The first films were about characters wrapped up in an epic space opera. The prequel films simply took events and then shoved characters into those events and hoped it would all stick together.

It didn’t.

Imagine if the films had been about the friendship between Obi Wan and Anakin; imagine if they’d really built up that friendship and made it deeply important and emotional. The betrayal would have actually mattered. Instead, the entire relationship between those two men was flat and unbelievable. Anakin’s ultimate turn to the Dark Side was…confusing.

Disney needs to hire good actors, not just big names like Samuel L. Jackson and Liam Neeson who add nothing to the films and whose star power is unnecessary with such a major brand.

Nobody knew a thing about Mark Hamill before Star Wars. Harrison Ford had only appeared in a small role in American Graffiti prior to Han Solo. I wasn’t around for the first Star Wars trilogy – I was two when Return of the Jedi came out in theaters – but I do think a part of the trilogy’s charm was its relatively unknown stars.

Of course, Disney needs to be careful working with unknowns: Hamill warmed up to the role eventually, and his performance in the second two films was quite good, but I can barely watch the original Star Wars without gritting my teeth whenever Luke speaks.

Star Wars canon changes constantly. The fiction built around the films has had to change and adapt to the canon introduced in the prequel trilogy. But there’s plenty of good material in the fiction to use for the upcoming films.

Disney should absolutely work with some of the bets writers like Timothy Zahn to craft the story for the upcoming films.

Of course, it sounds like this won’t happen, and that the stories of the next three films may be conceived by Lucas himself, but there’s a long time between now and 2015 for Disney to make its own decisions about what constitutes a compelling story and script.

Bring Back The Cast At Least For Cameos

If you look through statements made by George Lucas about what exactly the sequel films will be about it varies wildly one year to the next. The best, and most pragmatic, version is that Luke Skywalker and co. will come back in the sequels, but they’d be in their sixties or seventies.

Given the actual age of the actors, this would work out perfectly. Luke as an Obi Wan-like figure would be perfect. Certainly bringing back some of the old cast (and definitely C-3PO and R2-D2) would be a nice touch.

What I would hate to see would be new actors playing old roles. Or another Jar Jar Binks.

Don’t Keep Changing the Old Films, and Re-Release the Unedited Versions

Image via http://www.bigdamngeeks.com

As bad as the prequel films were, George Lucas’s worst crime against art and posterity were his awful edits of the original films. None was more grotesque than inserting the young Anakin as a ghost in place of the old in Return of the Jedi - a truly laughable, woeful, and quite possibly criminal change.

Disney should promise to never alter its new films and should give fans a re-release of the old films sans those edits. Sure, include a remastered soundtrack and make them look all spiffed up for the Blu-Ray, but give us the old films back, not the new bastardized versions Lucas foisted upon us for no good reason other than vanity and boredom.

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In the end, I think Disney’s purchase of LucasFilm is a good thing – a great thing even, despite the loud complaints of many fans.

Let’s face it, Lucas had long ago abandoned anything remotely like a true vision of the Star Wars universe, lore, and so forth. Disney’s recent films, on the other hand, have been excellent.

They’ve done a fantastic job in both acquiring Pixar and letting that studio have the creative freedom it needs to make great movies. Their purchase of Marvel has brought an entirely new suite of super hero movies to theatres, with many more to come.

With the Star Wars IP, the experience with big disappointments like John Carter and big hits like The Avengers, Disney really is positioned to make some great new films. If they play their cards right, we may finally get the sequel trilogy the franchise deserves.

Under the care of Lucas, on the other hand, we may have never gotten the films at all, or had a repeat of the prequel disaster.

Hopefully this also means a second life for Star Wars video games, though Disney will need to study the failures of recent Star Wars IPs carefully before moving forward there. Maybe they’ll decide to license out a new Knights of the Old Republic though the broader fate of LucasArts post-acquisition remains murky. Video games are big business, however, and I suspect Disney will capitalize on them somehow or another.

Or maybe we’ll eventually get a film trilogy surrounding the events of the Old Republic, which would certainly (or could certainly) be quite excellent, though one imagines anything like that would be far, far down the line.

All told, I remain cautiously optimistic, and just a tiny bit overjoyed to learn that Lucas will not be at the helm of these next three films. As much as I am indebted to him for his creation of the original Star Wars mythos and all the good entertainment that’s provided, he ought to have handed over creative control long ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

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It is interesting to note that the best of the Star Wars films was the one Lucas has the least amount of control over; The Empire Strikes Back.

Joss Whedon isn’t needed for the new films – even if he had the time, which I rather doubt considering that he’ll be involved in Avengers 2 which in turn will be connected to Iron Man 3, Captain America 2 and Thor 2.

What is needed is a producer/director who is a fan of the Star War’s universe, knows their stuff AND who is left alone by the studio. Too many big budget films (and TV shows for that matter) suffer when studios start trying to micromanage or get the director/producer to include things they never intended to. One of the reasons the TV Show Smallville did so well and lasted for 10 years was because DC comics and the network left the show alone.

Thankfully it seems that Disney may have learnt this from the Avengers, as they appear to have left Joss alone and trusted him to deliver – which he rather clearly did. Hopefully they will find someone who they can trust to do the same with Star Wars.

I’m guessing, btw, that Lucas’s involvement in these films is more to appease the fans than anything else. Paramount did much the same with Gene Roddenberry after Star Trek; The Motion Picture, making him an executive/creative producer who could influence the way Star Trek developed, but no longer control it. Like Lucas, GR proved rather good at making the setting (usually by ‘borrowing elements from others in both cases) but not so good at writing stories and characters after a while.

Well yes, the biggest thing they can do is let a fan of Star Wars have some good control over how the films are shaped. That’s one reason I picked Whedon – they’ve given him that control before, and they’re like to do it again, and he’s a director who I think would do a good job and who (IIRC) is a fan of the early films.

I think just having Lucas away from these movies will make them better. Disney will hire a talented director who is also a fan (is Zach Snyder a fan?) and they will be good again.

That being said, while the first 2 “new” SW movies sucked, I actually really liked the 3rd and I think its as good as the first 3. Despite the complete lack of character development, it still told a really good story, plus great visuals.

I’m not a big fan of Star Wars lore. The story doesn’t grab me. It all seems very simplistic… Now.

But when I was a kid? It was magic. It was immersive in a way nothing else had been (and few things have been since). I think that immersion is what the franchise needs to recapture.

So, to echo some of your points from a different vantage:

- No Big Names. It’s not only that Jackson and Neesan didn’t really bring anything to the table, they took something away from it as well. Because, no matter how good such a recognized talent is in a role, there’s always going to be the part of your brain that’s saying, “that’s Sam Jackson.” It damages immersion. So I’d say the talents don’t have to necessarily be completely unknown, but they really shouldn’t be Movie Stars, with already distinct public personalities.

- Recapture the magic. Your suggestions about Pixar and about puppetry are good because: they’d change the experience. CGI flash and bang is all well and good, but it’s expected. Younger audiences aren’t as impressed by it and, more importantly, aren’t delivered into the world by it. There needs to be real artistry involved; a human touch distinctly felt. Puppetry would be a vehicle for this, and we all know Pixar’s expertise in this arena.

Whoever takes on the project needs to love the project. They need to love the world, story and characters. Going forward, I think the best way to handle the Star Wars franchise is to not handle it like a franchise at all.

I absolutely agree that Jackson and Neesan detracted from the movie. I could handle some big names or bigger names – is there a place for Gary Oldman in Star Wars? I think so… – but I would love some lesser knowns. John Carter did this well, actually.

Yah, Gary Oldman is an excellent example. He’s an established talent, but he doesn’t have a large celebrity persona that obscures the roles he’s playing.

Sam Jackson is pretty much the opposite of that. It’s fun to have Sam Jackson playing Nick Fury (who was based on Sam Jackson). The reason why it’s fun is precisely the same reason why someone like a Sam Jackson shouldn’t have been cast in a Star Wars film.

Firefly was canceled due to poor ratings (said ratings being measured by an antiquated system that is only now just starting to get with the times).

Those poor ratings were due, at least in part, to a scheduling nightmare. During its brief stint, the show was moved around a lot. The strange decision to air episodes out of order was also possibly a contributing factor to its weak performance.

However, given the remarkable staying power of the franchise, I think it’s now very safe to say that it was mishandled by Fox. Shamefully so. I often wonder where it’d be today if it had been given the breathing room that shows like Dollhouse and Fringe have since received.

Fox cancelled it because they didn’t know how to market it, or really establish a demographic for it. You’ve got people wisecracking away half the time and it’s all very family friendly, but then you’ve also got space whores as well. Same sort of thing with Dollhouse really (though that at least that got 2 seasons). I think if the show had been more Deadwood in space and less BTVS with blasters then perhaps it might of had a longer run. Whedon can’t decide between going dark and going for the laughs.